hile the original MySims was overwhelmingly cute and allowed you to freely customize the world, its overall lack of structure hurt its long-term prospects. Without any real goals to achieve, you had to be satisfied with fiddling around in a impressively large but ultimately unfulfilling sandbox. With MySims Kingdom, EA has kept the charm of the original, while adding in a storyline and gameplay progression that holds your attention and gives you an incentive to keep playing.

MySims Kingdom, unsurprisingly enough, takes place in a fantastic kingdom comprising about a dozen different lands. The kingdom is ruled by King Roland, who has entrusted Order of the Wandoliers with rare magical scepters. By harnessing the power of the scepter, the chosen Sims could build houses, bridges and other structures. As luck would have it, most of those original members have moved away or retired, leaving a vacancy for your Sim to fill.

After customizing and naming your Sim, a quick tutorial mode introduces you to the game’s structure. As you compete with a couple of other Sims, you get a chance to learn how to place and maneuver items, build things and all that good stuff. While MySims veterans might grumble a little about having to go over things they already know, it’s definitely important for new players to get acclimated to the building system. It is, after all, one of the key components to the game. Even if you are familiar with the basics, the intro delves into a couple of the newer features that are worth learning about.

You can now socialize with other Sims to achieve goals by way of a minigame, similar to how you make characters in the main Sims series interact with one another. In the tutorial, the king’s daughter has some important plans squirreled away. By flattering and entertaining her enough, she gives up the location of the gear-making schematics. Simply having the plans isn’t enough—you have to also have the necessary raw materials to make those gears. Materials can be obtained through several different ways. If you need wood, you can walk up to a tree and chop some lumber by swinging the Wii remote like an axe. Metal can be obtained by mining. Other essences can be found by shaking trees, pulling weeds, fishing or digging into the ground.

Those gears are part of another new aspect of the game—the contraption system. At various point in your travels, you’ll encounter some dilapidated piece of equipment that needs your attention. For example, a mechanical bull might not be connected to the power-providing windmill. By placing a variety of conveyor belts between the bull and windmill, you’re able to power it up. Similarly, you might need to connect pipes to a pump and create a sprinkler system to water plants. The puzzles we played had a variety of different solutions, so you don’t have to follow a specific plan to proceed.

Each of various lands has a specific theme. We played through a couple, with Cowboy Junction being our favorite. In Cowboy Junction, you get to learn the secret of chef Gino’s world-famous pizza by playing through a handful of missions. First, you have to repair a flour mill by replacing a missing drivetrain. Next, you have to nurture some tomato plants back to health by creating an irrigation system. Someone has ruined a cattle pen, which you have to repair before returning the cows home. Eventually you find the culprit behind the broken and missing equipment and save the day.

We had a lot of fun with MySims Kingdom. Adding a story was a great move—it’s a lot more compelling to build a house in order to advance a plot rather than just doing so to unlock a new pattern. That’s not to say that customization has been neutered as a result though. In the few hours we spent with the game, we unlocked tons of costumes, building options and patterns. If you want to see what a house painted to match bacon looks like, this is probably the game for you.

Look for it this November for the Wii and Nintendo DS.